Review: Season 3, Episode 10

This episode was a tough one. Obviously, it took a while, owing as much to life circumstances as to the episode’s content. Theoretically, it was one of those episodes that should have “written itself.” I knew going into it that I’d have two plots going at once, and far too many characters to handle than should ever make me worried about not being able to fill the space. But I was worried anyways, because…well, it’s a Lost World episode. Maybe I should start from there.

It was a goal going into The Chaos Project that every corner of Sonic history would get its due acknowledgement, and Lost World was no exception. As a game, I do like Lost World a bit better than Colors. But in terms of its place in the world of Sonic, Colors, despite its criminal level of detachment from the rest of Sonic history, is workable—Lost World isn’t. Colors acknowledges that it follows up on Eggman’s history of wrongdoings against the planet. It adds more alien species and their homeworlds to the Sonic universe that we already know is inhabited elsewhere. But then there’s Lost World. What is a Lost Hex? What is a Zeti? What are we even doing here? Lost World doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. I’ve mentioned it a bit on this website in the past, but it frustrates me to no end. We know that the Lost Hex is a “mysterious floating continent” due to game manuals and other external information, but…that’s pretty much it. Interviews with Iizuka claim that it is an unexplored part of Sonic’s world, but that’s even more dodgy. What makes it mysterious? Why is it unexplored? Did anyone even know it was there before? If not, how? How did Eggman find it? These are all very straightforward questions. Not only did Lost World not feeling sharing the answers, it couldn’t even answer the most surface-level questions you can possibly ask. For example: What is the main antagonist’s name? Zavok. Zavok’s name. Is never spoken. Not once. In the entire game. How Sonic even knew the name come Forces is a question of its own, but I think that’s the least of the problems Forces has to contend with. But Lost World. I’ve never known any piece of media to fail so spectacularly at delivering information. The word “Zeti” is only ever spoken in Zavok’s muffled, drowned-out in-level monologues, such as about how he is “the one Zeti you cannot defeat” as if you’re supposed to have any idea what in the world that word means. It’s almost as if the writers and designers knew they were putting out a bad product, so they intentionally obscured the details to make the failure even more forgettable. It had the opposite effect for me.

Theoretically, unanswered questions should make for fertile ground for a fanfic writer like myself. That’s how Forces ended up getting such a big spotlight relative to other modern games. But there’s a difference between “unanswered questions” and “I don’t even know how many questions I need to ask,” and Lost World is the latter.

Back in the early days of planning when I didn’t know how I would fill all these Seasons’ worth of episodes, a “Lost World episode” was decided as a must, though I had no idea what that would entail. Sure, I could go about answering questions about the origins of the Lost Hex and the Zeti, but the questions were so open-ended that I could make up literally whatever I wanted—or I could just spend the same amount of effort creating new settings and characters that would be far more interesting. It was a daunting prospect. I earmarked the episode, however, as a potential door for talking about Wisps, which I knew weren’t likely to come up much elsewhere in the series. I was quite bothered by the notion that Wisps were back even though they explicitly left, seemingly never to return, at the end of Colors. My first thought was that, perhaps, the Lost Hex was actually a floating continent of Planet Wisp, not of Earth, so the Wisps being there was just a given. That would at least explain why no one commented on it, as well as why it is mysterious and unexplored and contains strange unknown creatures. Not really sure how Eggman would absorb Earth’s life energy from all the way over on Planet Wisp, but I never claimed this was a fully-formed idea. Of course, then Forces came around and shattered that plan by having Wisps be just as present and normalized on Earth as they were on the Lost Hex. But I thought I could still work with it, and that’s where ideas resembling the final product started to take shape. If, perhaps, the Lost Hex were under the influence of some sort of time-space shenanigans, not unlike the Little Planet, then perhaps it could be, literally, the best of both worlds. It could be a “regular” floating continent of Earth, but also a natural place for Wisps to inhabit. It could occupy multiple locations simultaneously, or travel back and forth, or perhaps not exist in either location, but instead in some sort of external space that is equally connected to both. Not only would that explain the “mysterious and unexplored” issues, adhere more closely to Iizuka’s claims and intentions, and clear up the issues with the last theory, but it would also act as a vessel for Wisps to return to Earth as of Forces. Even though that was a key inspiration for this theory, I didn’t even end up using that part. Of course, there are lots of questions left, but it would be a long time before I started considering those.

So, I had my ideas about the Lost Hex, but not so much about the Zeti. I, like most people by my understanding, was under the impression that they were probably dead, so it didn’t matter much. In the final Zone, you take them out one by one, and instead of fleeing like they did earlier in the game, they go up in a puff of smoke like destroyed robots do in that game. Or, in Zavok’s case, sink into boiling lava. Then Zavok came back for Forces, which raised some eyebrows, but then he turned out to be a fake, which brought things back to square one, but with some added room for doubt. Then Team Sonic Racing came around to destroy that doubt along with what little semblance of character consistency Zavok still had left. But even then, there was one curious piece of information there, labeling Zavok as the former leader of the Deadly Six. That means that either a) everyone else is still dead, or b) some interesting things have happened behind the scenes. More interesting than anything these guys did in Lost World, that’s for sure. This is the kind of unanswered question that I like. We know that something of narrative value is there, and we have some reasonable potential choices for what that may be. I’m not sure exactly what it was that steered me away from option (a), but I suppose IDW probably had at least a little bit to do with it. For the record, no, I still don’t consider IDW to be canon to The Chaos Project or to the games in general. But I respect that it does its best to remain consistent with the games, and I try to show that respect by leaving room for most of its ideas to exist within the world. And by the judgement of IDW, it is perfectly reasonable and normalized that the Deadly Six are still alive and well. In all honesty, it’s pretty fair to say, “If Zavok survived, why wouldn’t the rest of them?” And I think, in general, the fanbase started to forget the idea that they might be dead as Lost World left the popular discourse in general. I think I just decided to go with the flow on that one.

So next was to figure out the politics of the Deadly Six, given that they were alive. For Zavok to be the “former” leader, either the team had to disband or someone had to knock him down a peg and take control. Once again, IDW shows that the team is still perfectly well together, and I thought it might be a little odd to suggest otherwise when they showed no indication of coming apart when last we saw them. Or at least, I thought it would be an odd story to have told offscreen. But knowing how strict Zik was as a former leader, and how much of a shame Zavok’s defeat would bring upon him, Zik coming out retirement just to correct Zavok’s mistakes seemed like something that required no further explanation. But it did require more thought. What is the importance of this team to begin with? What do they do when they’re not trying to get rid of Sonic? More to ruminate on as I decided to slot this episode into the at-the-time far distant placement of late Season 3.

I had ideas, but still not really an episode. I don’t remember exactly what it was that brought about inspiration, but one day, just a year or two ago, it struck. Once again, it might have had something to do with IDW, just in the sense that it put Lost World back on the brain. But what I realized was this. Zeti are creatures that can control robots. That’s a really weirdly specific power. And it makes sense as something that might arise, naturally or artificially, among a civilization that lives and breathes among technology. But that’s not what’s happening here. The Lost Hex is almost entirely naturalistic in its composition. Apart from what may or may not be built by Eggman, there’s hardly a machine in sight. Why would a group who cares so much about power choose to live in a place where that power is squandered and useless? Unless they didn’t choose. Just look at the shape of the Lost Hex. The hexes themselves. Geometrically perfect figures. That’s not something you expect to show up in nature—unless it was constructed with a purpose. I realized that the Lost Hex was almost certainly manmade. But why would the Deadly Six make a place where they can’t use their own powers? Unless they weren’t the ones who made it.

Long story short, I decided that the Lost Hex was a prison. Someone knew how dangerous the Deadly Six were, and intentionally created and trapped them on this place where they can’t do what makes them so dangerous. That spiraled into lots of who-what-when-where-why questions, and the theory morphed a bit as I fixated on a related question. If this thing is manmade, why does it look like it’s only half done? And what happens if it’s completed? That’s where the actual plot of this episode finally started to develop. I came up with the idea that would become Zyzzyx, their “jailor,” an incredibly powerful being who stole away whole chunks of planets (including Planet Wisp) to create this Lost Hex. But for whatever reason, he’s not around anymore, so his job is left unfinished, and the Zeti are left trapped for eternity. I decided before long that a prison didn’t feel quite right. It seems too big, too complex, and too luxurious to be intended that way. This freed up some more interesting answers to the “what happens if it’s completed” question. A weapon seemed like the natural way to go. And it could still be a prison in spirit—if it were done, the Zeti could conquer the universe, but because it wasn’t finished, they’ve ended up trapped here instead. Those thoughts are what eventually evolved into the idea of Zyzzyx taking his own life to hide the secrets of the Hex. He didn’t mean for it to be a prison, but he knew there was a risk of the Zeti using it wrongly, so he turned it into their prison both to protect them and to protect the universe from them.

That leaves the Threatening Three. Once I was set in this idea of exploring a more complicated history for the Zeti, I decided, as I often do, that the Deadly Six could make excellent use of a foil. If I wanted to make real believable characters out of any of them, I felt that we needed to see how they would respond to a situation more nuanced than “let’s destroy the outsiders,” which was the only personality trait they all had apart from their individual one-note villain stereotypes.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten that Zavok did make a mention of “other Zeti” in Lost World (more fuzzy in-level dialogue being the only sources of actual lore in this game), so I knew they had to exist, and it would’ve been strange not to address that. And really, I thought it might be fun to make some Zeti of my own, adhering to the general character rules established by the Deadly Six while also making them at least slightly interesting in their own right, unlike their counterparts. I decided pretty quickly on “evil emperor,” “stoic samurai,” and “wicked witch” as my one-note villain stereotypes, three being enough to make them feel like a team without dividing the attention between them too much. I figured having them be the remains of an opposing army that warred against the Deadly Six would be a good explanation for why so few Zeti seem to be left, and why they were in hiding during the events of Lost World. But it really wasn’t until I got to writing the episode that I finally decided who in this war would be the “good guys” and who would be the “bad guys.” I was torn between making the Threatening Three even more over-the-top evil than the Deadly Six in appearance, making it constantly weird for [insert protagonist pair here] to acknowledge that they’re the good guys, or simply using them to develop the Deadly Six by portraying them as the lesser of two evils. The unfortunate result of this indecision was that I…kind of ended up redeeming everyone, which was absolutely not the plan going into this. Espio’s line about evil dying at the hand of evil was meant to be a lot more reasonable. But I’m getting ahead myself, because Espio’s not even supposed to be here yet.

So, after all this planning, this agonizing, this headache that was shaping up to have a lot more potential than I expected—I was ready to cancel this episode entirely. As of my current plans, this is most likely going to be one of the last “filler” episodes for the whole rest of the series. The definition of filler definitely gets a little hazy when you consider the fact that this episode played a pretty important role in three and a half long-running character arcs, but if you want to define it as any episode that isn’t vital to the main plot(s) of the season (or the exceptions made for Specials or the mandatory pre-finale comedy episode) then this might be it. I was excited about streamlining the story a bit, and I knew this episode would turn out to be exactly as big of a problem as it did, so I wanted to let it go with the rest. This season has been pretty focused so far, and I wasn’t at all excited to write an entire episode that couldn’t be made relevant to the rest of the season, which is what led to the idea of bringing The End into the Zeti backstory. Even then, there are three things that stopped me from cancelling. One, I already advertised that Hero and Bruno would get a spotlight this season (I figured it was a given, this being the alien season and one of my main characters having an alien companion), and I like to avoid false advertising if I can. Two, I knew it would be now or never for making any attempt at fixing up the pain of Lost World’s story, and my pride stood in the way of letting that one game go. I lump addressing the Wisp issue in with that, because if I went nearly the entire series without explaining the lack of Wisps, that would’ve been bad. And three, Espio. Espio’s been going through a lot of stuff in the background of a lot of episodes, and with the end of filler content, this was basically my last chance to resolve and explain some of those happenings in a natural way. Plus, a reader requested an Espio episode, and I couldn’t let my fans down. So let’s talk about Espio now.

“What if Espio trained with Master Zik” is a weird piece of Sonic fan speculation that I certainly can’t claim to have come up with myself. I never really understood where that idea came from. I suppose there’s a connection between them in that they’re the only two real users of martial arts in the Sonic cast, but they aren’t even arts of the same philosophy or cultural origin. But nonetheless, the idea was on my mind as I spent these last few years pondering the future of Espio’s character following where he was left to me at the end of Out of the Shadows. From what few appearances Espio has had since then, I’ve already implied that he’s been doing some sort of secret training that has been improving his abilities, but it wasn’t yet concrete just what that training was. I knew that I wanted it to be something a little bit suspicious—it was meant to seem odd that he was learning some potentially dark and definitely arcane techniques without anyone knowing how, so I figured he had some sort of secret teacher and/or training location. Eventually, I decided that Zik just…worked. The sheer convenience of the timescale used for the Shinobi clan lining up with Zik’s age was too good to ignore, and some cultural and historical research led me to the concepts of Wuxing and Bagua, connections that could be made between Zik’s Chinese roots and Espio’s Japanese. These concepts were mixed and matched a bit to create the qi system described in this episode, something that I believe I described as “chakra” in a previous episode review. Similar and compatible ideas, compatible enough that it made sense for Zik to train Espio in one and have it be understood in terms of the other. So…that was that.

Unfortunately, this was the point where I started realizing how incongruous this episode was turning out to be. “Espio is secretly training with Zik, and a jealous Zavok starts a power struggle” would, under normal circumstances, constitute its own episode idea, while “The Deadly Six and the Threatening Three are at war over the fate of the Lost Hex, with our heroes caught in the middle” would be another. But honestly, I had no interest in doing two separate Lost World episodes. I barely had interest enough in doing one. The only reason I decided to go through with this was because I wanted to tell both stories, and it was now or never for that. Hypothetically, therefore, there exists some alternate universe where I decided to break this into a two-parter to accommodate the extra content. Certainly, there was enough left on the cutting room floor to fill that extra space. By the time the big battle started, I had already decided to start rushing through everything to wrap up on time. The lesser four of the Deadly Six really should have had a lot more time to fight onscreen, actually making use of their full abilities and saying more than a line or two each. The Mechasaur and Cat Mech were both similarly underutilized. Espio really should have had proper one-on-one fights with both Zunin and Zapp. There was an idea for Espio to get some help from the Deadly Six in order to make it to the top of the Mechasaur during that sequence, but that was an easy skip. And of course, probably the most glaring content glossed over is that the entire plot was just begging for a fight, however brief, of Amy and Hero versus Espio. I was hoping it might be a bit refreshing, having a situation like this where the heroes don’t start fighting like idiots for once, but skipping that definitely left me felling like a little something was missing.

There was certainly room to pad out the first part as well. Amy and Hero could’ve done a bit of spelunking, uncovering a few of the mysteries of Zyzzyx and the Hex instead of being immediately captured and then having it all dumped on them at once. And of course, we could’ve actually followed Bruno’s side adventures with the Wisps. But yeah, one episode of this was plenty for me.

I think that just about covers the story of this episode’s creation. So, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s title, “War of the Lost World,” is a reference to the popular H.G. Wells novel, “War of the Worlds,” combined with the title of Sonic Lost World. It refers quite plainly to the war between the Deadly Six and Threatening Three.
  • The original planned title, which was actually in use for about half of the episode’s writing, was “Paradise Lost World.” This was a similar reference to “Paradise Lost,” a biblical tale about Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. In this comparison, Zik would be the serpent presenting Espio with the forbidden fruit (quite literally), granting him knowledge that will irrevocably plant evil in his heart. I thought this was a much more clever title, but unfortunately, the war aspect of the story was much more important than Espio’s moral dilemmas.
• The following locations, or pieces thereof, from previous Sonic games appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
  • Bridge Zone (Sonic 1 8-bit)
  • Planet Wisp (mentioned)
  • Sweet Mountain (mentioned)
  • Aquarium Park (mentioned)
  • The Lost Hex (Lost World), including:
    • Tropical Coast
    • Sky Road (mentioned)
    • Silent Forest
    • Windy Hill (cameo appearance implied)
    • Desert Ruins (mentioned, cameo appearance implied)
    • Frozen Factory (cameo appearance implied)
    • Lava Mountain (cameo appearance implied)
    • Yoshi’s Island Zone (cameo appearance implied)
    • The Legend of Zelda Zone (cameo appearance implied)
      • These DLC zones were a last-minute addition, but given the spatial shenanigans going on with the Lost Hex, it didn’t seem too far outside the realm of possibility to canonize them. This could imply that the world of Yoshi’s Island and the world of The Legend of Zelda are both planets somewhere in the same galaxy as Earth. Or, more likely, some of the worlds that make up the pieces of the Lost Hex come from other universes as well.
• In discussing how they first met, Hero corrects Amy’s assumption about that being during the events of Sonic Forces. Instead, he refers back six months earlier to offscreen events taking place around the prequel comic, “Moment of Truth,” canonizing this particular comic for the first time, and confirming that the cat(?) seen in that comic was actually just an alternate avatar for Hero.
  • Theoretically, I have already written about this particular meeting. I have a few chapters of a Sonic Forces prequel/interquel story sitting unpublished at the moment, which this episode referred to in detail. I considered publishing what I have just for the context of this scene, but I’d rather wait until I either know I can finish the story or become certain that I can’t, because I don’t plan on finishing it any time soon.
  • The timeline placement of this particular comic is actually up for debate, so this is the first time it’s been given a clear position. The comic features what appears to be the Resistance battling Eggman without Sonic, which would imply that it is somewhere in the middle of the 6 month timeskip. This is the obvious and generally accepted timeline placement. But on close inspection, it really isn’t the best option. Eggman attacks the city from the outside as if he doesn’t already have near-total control, which he should theoretically have after the attack that led to Sonic’s capture. Sure, it’s possible that he lost the city, attacked it but failed to get it back, then attacked it again and actually did get it back all within the span of that timeskip, but that’s a pretty needless assumption. Occam’s Razer and all that. Also, Eggman implies at the end of the comic that he’ll be coming back in his next attack with some secret advantage—pretty obviously implying Infinite, who everyone should already know about if this were meant to be after Sonic’s defeat. On the other hand, we already know of a failed attack Eggman made against the city before Sonic’s defeat, which would lead into him using Infinite next time. It happened in Episode Shadow, though it wasn’t much talked about. I believe it makes the most sense for this comic to take place around that time. But what about the Avatar, Hero, himself? How can he have the character development breakthrough in this comic before his character development even begins in the game? Well, you have that question regardless of your placement preference, unless you think you can squeeze the comic between Space Port and the cutscene that immediately precedes it, which sounds like a stretch to me. This is, of course, all explained in my unpublished story, but I see the most reasonable story as being that he, after finally building up enough confidence to fight in this comic, had that all torn right back down again when Sonic was defeated—another good reason to place the comic before that event instead of after.
  • There are some notable parallels between some of things Hero opens up about in the conversation that follows, and the story of a certain other Sonic character. I leave you to find them.
• Bruno mentions being a “Baby Wisp,” something only seen before in the mobile game Sonic Runners.
• Bruno also mentions that Wisp lifespans aren’t quite as long as those of Earthlings. This may become important later.
• Lastly, Bruno mentions that Yacker once described Sonic directly to him as being “hot as the sun,” confirming Bruno to be an actual character from Sonic Colors DS—a nameless Red Wisp among a small crowd that listens to Yacker’s stories at the end of a final cutscene unique to that version of the game.
• Amy’s mention of Knuckles getting jealous about playing in the water refers to an in-level piece of dialogue from Aqua Road in Sonic Forces.
• Amy introduces us to the primary setting of this episode in the same way Tails once did—”It’s the Lost Hex.” Unlike Tails, however, Amy goes on to actually explain what that means, even breaking the fourth wall a bit by complaining about Tails’ failure to do so in the original game, despite her not being there for that conversation.
  • She mentions an “old historian” who originally discovered the Hex. That may become important later.
• All of the 8 qi types are represented among the 9 Zeti in this episode. Zomom is earth, Zik is wood, Zeleena and Zeena are both water (ice in the case of the latter), Zor is wind (more on that in a moment), Zapp is thunder, Zavok is fire, Zunin is metal, and Zazz is heaven.
  • Zor is the odd one out here, as his abilities would be best described as “shadow” or “darkness,” but given that such a qi type does not exist in Bagua or Wuxing, his ability to fly and association with a giant bird leaves wind as the next best thing. Perhaps he uses seals to access the forbidden darkness qi in the same way that Espio does for his Shadow Sealing technique. Apparently, that’s even somewhat canon according to his character bio.
• Bruno refers to the Cacophonic Conch as a “magic conch shell.” This is a reference to an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, the place where most people probably learned to mispronounce the word “conch.”
• Zeleena’s villain stereotype is synthesized from the popular vision of a “wicked witch” perhaps most recognizable from The Wizard of Oz. Her name may or may not be inspired by a first name given to said Wicked Witch in the live action Disney show, Once Upon a Time. Her rhyming patterns, even quoted directly in “double, double, toil and trouble” are derived from the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• Zunin’s inspiration, and name, are derived from the Ronin classification of Samurai (despite serving a master and not being a wanderer), mixed with a bit of medieval knight, Darth Vader from Star Wars, and the Death Knight from Fire Emblem.
  • Zunin is the only Zeti whose name begins with “Zu.” Along with Zyzzyx, this makes every possible Z-vowel pair represented.
• Zapp is largely inspired by Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, mixed with a few other more generic “evil old emperor” stereotypes, as well as a bit of Snoke, also from Star Wars.
• Primarily due to Zapp’s presence, Star Wars is quoted constantly throughout the episode. I won’t list every last one of them here, but for an early/late celebration of May the 4th this year, here are some fan favorites:
  • “Did you ever hear the tragedy of [Zyzzyx/Darth Plagueis the Wise]?”
  • “Execute [the Deadly Six/Order 66].”
  • “Unlimited power!”
• South Island, as a general location, is canonized for the first time in this episode. I’ve always been reluctant to do so, given that the geography of Green Hill has been a little bit confusing, benign a part of a much larger continent in Forces, for example. Because it was only used in reference to Bridge Zone in this episode, it is possible to interpret this as applying only to the setting of 8-Bit Sonic 1.
• Upon absorbing the power drawn from planets by the Lost Hex, Zapp’s and Espio’s eyes both take on the same glaring green effect seen on the eye of Eggman’s final boss mech from Lost World. (Apparently it’s called “Eggrobo”? But that wasn’t known until the Sonic Encyclo-Speed-ia came out, like, last year? Chalk another one up for Lost World’s inability to deliver even the simplest information. And it wasn’t bad enough that the final boss of Forces was just “Death Egg Robot”?)
• The final climax of intensity between Zapp and Zik parallels two different scenes from Star Wars simultaneously. The Emperor is represented by both Zapp and Zik, while Espio parallels Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, and Zavok parallels Vader in Return of the Jedi.

And that is all! Pretty sure this was one of the longest reviews yet. And also quite possibly one of that largest numbers of new tags created for a single post, perhaps just behind reviews of new Sonic games, though it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re beating out those as well. I guess that’s the cost of Lost World being so isolated both from general Sonic lore, and from The Chaos Project up until now. Next time, we’re going to start wrapping up the season! This may have been the last “filler” episode, but we’ve still got one piece of mandatory stress relief before the usual grim finale. Hope to see you then!

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!

Review: Season 3, Episode 3

So this was…a complicated episode to write. Like many recent episodes, it’s a story that I’ve been looking forward to telling for a very long time. But how exactly I would tell it is another issue. In the earliest pre-planning phases, the assumption was that this episode, like S1 E11 Condition Extreme, would derive its drama almost entirely from the medical emergency taking place. Rather than Johnny already being deathly ill, Seraph would have some other reason to be scanning everyone in the Rebellion one by one, and eventually finding that Johnny is the only one in imminent danger. That obviously means that the context of Johnny being treated would’ve been very different, Seraph’s story would already have been at least mostly told, so the two of them would’ve had a lot more alone time together. That probably would’ve been better for the “romance” aspect of this episode, but the way this episode ended was problematic as it was, focusing on storytime for nearly the entire second half. If the story had already been told, any sense of interest left in the plot of the episode would be pretty much gone, and it was clear to me that “oh no Johnny’s sick let’s heal him” would not be enough drama to make up for that. Also of note is that, at this early phase in the planning, heavy consideration was being given to having the Rebellion still split up following the events of Civil War at this point, such that it would take the alien visitor and the potential threats to everyone’s lives to get them all back on speaking terms for the first time after their falling out. In that hypothetical plotline, S3 E2 Agent Black probably wouldn’t have existed at all (some of its elements might have carried back into part 1), this would’ve been episode 2, and all that drama would’ve been what kept this episode going. But, as planning for the Civil War plot reached more detailed phases, I decided that Civil War required a far more direct, cohesive, and wholesome ending. If you can call it that.

The Civil War arc obviously took mega priority over this more random early season episode, so I was left to pick up the pieces here once that was set in stone. Seraph’s origin and her medical role was, as mentioned, planned far in advance, but the circumstances of Shadow/Shadow’s Civil War team/the Rebellion as a whole meeting her for the first time was a little bit more…nebulous. As was what she was generally capable of. I knew I wanted her to attack Shadow on sight, and have her stopped by Johnny stepping in to defend him. That sounded like a two minute scene at best. But, now with the need to add action/drama back into the mix, this felt like the right place to do it. I knew that three things needed to happen here. 1: As our first look at the White Arms, she needed to represent the absolute opposite of the biological everything that the Black Arms are tied to. 2: To give this scene the length, action, and drama that it needed, she needed to not only hold her own, but downright outclass Shadow, at least in his surprised/off-his-game state. 3: To lead into Johnny having a crush on her, her trained fighting skills needed to shine through as much if not more than the power of her technology. So, taking all of this into account, I needed a highly futuristic alien technology that is hypothetically capable of taking down almost any foe, regardless of power level, yet also seamlessly and organically integrates with the user’s action movie–oriented skills. My thoughts went to one place. Samus Aran, Space Warrior and protagonist of Nintendo’s Metroid franchise.

Now, I’ve been a fan of the Metroid series for quite some time, and I’d like to state for the record that this episode’s proximity to the recent release of Metroid Dread is a complete coincidence. The choice to give Seraph a Samus-style power armor was storyboarded out on (virtual) paper in December of last year, 6 months before Dread was announced to exist, and even longer given that I’d had the idea for some time before writing it down. It likely was Dread, however, that reinforced the tone I wanted this set of scenes to have. As the Metroid series has gone on, its protagonist has been portrayed more and more like an action hero, pulling off incredible feats of agility and control, and looking freaking awesome while doing it. Dread has integrated those concepts into gameplay more closely than ever, and Seraph’s fight against the giant snake…well, that’s pretty much what a Dread boss fight looks like.

It would be a stretch to say that I “had to” make Seraph so much like Samus. But given the three requirements I stated above, making something that didn’t come out looking like Samus would’ve been a very difficult feat. Futuristic technology that depends entirely upon a user’s combat skills that would be instantly recognizable to a soldier pretty much mandated some form of power armor. I didn’t have to give that power armor a variable (and chargeable) Arm Cannon, or a Speed Booster, or a Morph Ball, but it had to have some kind futuristic weapon that could keep Shadow back, and it had to be fast enough to keep up with Shadow’s speed, and I really wanted to give her a Sonic-style technology-assisted Spin Attack. I suppose I could have made those all separate pieces of technology instead of integrated armor, but that would look less futuristic, less intimidating, less mysterious, and would take away the logical aspect of her studying alien planets and likely needing a suit/helmet that can keep her alive in a variety of environments anyways. So I had the choice to either make a character who doesn’t suit my needs as well as she could, or to make a Samus ripoff. I decided, much as I did with a certain Sly Raccoon, that if I was going to make something that already exists, I might as well go all in and call it a reference. And so, Seraph gained not just the weapons, but also the specific skills and body language of Samus. Of course, visually, the armor is quite a bit different from that of Samus, lacking any of the signature orange color (although Dread stole my white and blue color scheme), having a three-eyed alien face visor with elongated skull, and having a general focus on “teardrop” shapes that Samus’ armor definitely doesn’t have. There’s also the difference of personality, which appears quite similar at first, but soon clarifies that Seraph is perfectly well allowed to talk where Samus is not. (Long story short, Metroid had its own version of Sonic 06 called “Other M,” where Samus apparently talked “too much,” and now the franchise avoids everything that game did like the plague.) So yeah, that’s the story of White Seraph.

But perhaps what you came here for is the story of the White Arms. It’s, uhh…quite a shake-up to the canon, to say the least. There were a lot of factors that went into Seraph’s storytime. Above all else, like much of this series does, the goal was to create a backstory that accurately explains the actions and circumstances, in this case not just of a single Sonic character, but of an entire species…which is technically just a Black Doom hivemind, so it really only is one character, but whatever. The motivation of the Black Arms in Shadow the Hedgehog are unclear at best. Sometimes it looks like they want to simply own the planet from an imperial standpoint, calling for surrender and whatnot, sometimes it looks like they want to specifically subjugate the humans for slave labor/a food source, and sometimes it just looks like they want to annihilate everything. I’m not sure if the Japanese script is any clearer about this than the English one, but between the need to land the Black Comet and plant its roots into the Earth, to spread a new gas into the atmosphere, to plant Red Fruits and other alien vegetation, it always sounded to me like terraforming. They don’t actually want Earth, they want a planet that’s healthy and sustainable for their unique biological needs, and they’re replacing what’s on Earth in order to make that happen. What happens to the humans after that is effectively irrelevant, hence why they seem to keep changing their minds about what they want done in that area. They might hypothetically have some use, but no harm is done if they’re wiped out, so both options are explored over the course of the game. The real question is why. Why did they spend 2000 years or more in the attempt to terraform this particular planet? What was so important about it? Why did they need to in the first place?

We do have at least a small number of clues to look at. The Black Comet, as far as we’re made aware, is a thriving home for them. There’s no indicator that they are in any sort of desperate need for land or resources, and even if they were, Black Doom has such complete control over the population that he most certainly has access to other solutions that, while drastic, would definitely be easier than the 2000 year wait for this particular planet. Even if it was just for the land, there are…a lot of planets with land out there that don’t have the ability to fight back. That goes for our solar system alone. It pretty much can’t be for resources needed to sustain themselves, because they show themselves to be quite capable of bioengineering whatever resources they need regardless of the present conditions of the planet they intend to use. They show no interest in Earth’s inorganic resources—with the singular exception of the Chaos Emeralds. But that’s not it either. They don’t need the planet for the Emeralds, they need the Emeralds just to get down to the surface of the planet. There are planets with much thinner atmospheres that the Black Comet would have no trouble passing through. There’s another interesting factoid in there. Black Doom states that the Comet is unable to pass through “another planet’s atmosphere.” Another planet, as in, he considers the Comet to be a planet. That was what led me to an answer to all of these whys. If we were to assume that the Black Comet is the fragmented remains of what was once a home planet, it would explain almost everything. We’re no longer assuming that the Black Arms are trying to extend what they already have, but instead that they are trying to restore/replicate something that was lost. Sure, any old planet would be better than just a measly comet, but if they’re trying to replace a home planet, that would mean a much narrower range of acceptable conditions. They would need a planet with the right mass to produce the right amount of gravity, the right distance from the sun to maintain the right temperature, and the right composition and age of the sun for that matter. That’s just to name a few. Suddenly, coming across a planet like Earth is a once in a lifetime chance, and any amount of waiting is worth it. Of course, the Chaos Emeralds are probably a bonus/what allowed them to find Earth in the first place, and I’ll get to that.

But before that, we’re now left with the question of what destroyed their planet to begin with. There are plenty of ways to answer that question, but the Black Arms are such an intensely warlike race, seeming to be literally engineered for combat, that a planet-shattering war seems like by far the most reasonable option. But…all evidence seems to indicate the Black Arms are a hivemind species, where only the leader has any agency, controlling the rest telepathically as he attempts to do to Shadow at the end of the game. So…he certainly isn’t fighting himself. Ignoring the whole “Three Houses” idea for a minute, that leaves us with the need to introduce an outside element. A new species so threatening that the Black Arms’ home plant was completely obliterated in the conflict with them. The most straightforward way to play that would be…well, the Metarex style if we’re being honest. Introduce a new alien invader which eats planets for breakfast, outshining the Black Arms and sweeping them aside to show themselves as the far greater threat. There would certainly be some merit to that, but…we’ve spent how many paragraphs now trying to establish why the Black Arms are being made relevant again? It would kind of defeat the purpose if that train of logic ended at them being made irrelevant again. So instead, we need to complicate things a bit more, and give the Black Arms a more evenly matched foe. There are a couple smaller details here that I can’t necessarily talk about yet, but the important point here is that the threat level of the Black Arms is maintained by pitting them against a foe that didn’t clearly force them to do anything drastic or cowardly. A foe that came from their own planet was the most logical way to go about that.

But why White Arms specifically? Any number of strange, planet-destroying things might have been born of the nonsensical alien world the Black Arms came from. Again, this starts heading towards certain details I can’t talk about yet, but hopefully the connection to Chaos Project lore is more than a little obvious. For all Light, there is Darkness, and for all Darkness, there is Light. The Black Arms are the absolute most unquestionably Evil Darkness that has ever existed in the Sonic canon (besides maybe Mephiles, but that’s a different debate). Creating a balancing force to them was a fairly logical conclusion, all things considered. But…doesn’t the whole “Balance” thing usually only apply in matters of Chaos? Well…this is something I hope to talk about in a future episode, but at this moment I’m not certain where it will fit, and I don’t mind sharing it here. The Black Arms are a matter of Chaos. On Earth, being able to use Chaos Control takes a highly specific set of qualifications that are generally unique to the existence of the Chaos Emeralds. Black Doom is the only creature in the known Sonic canon who can use Chaos Control naturally—despite not having Chaos Emeralds on his home world/comet. The claim I’m making is that this unique natural ability derives from the unique nature of the Black Arms’ origin. They come from a planet that is likely more perfectly balanced than any other in the universe. Any, that is, but Earth—which, as stated in Sonic Unleashed, gets quite a bit of an extra outside push to maintain that balance. The energy of the Chaos Emeralds doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the energy of the Earth, which in turn is generated by the cyclical war between Light and Dark Gaia. A war between light and dark that permits the use of Chaos Energy. Sound familiar…?

So anyways, if we’re making the light opposites to the Black Arms, they, thematically, have to be good guys, and they naturally became a very useful vessel for introducing us and the cast to all of these ideas we just discussed, which pretty much leaves us at the origin of this particular episode. That all took a while, but I think that’s about it on the story of this episode’s creation. So, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s title, “Impending Doom,” is a pretty straightforward reference to the idea that signs are pointing towards the impossible return of Black Doom. Definitely not my favorite title, but it does its job.
  • You might almost say that a sense of impending doom is the same thing as a sense of “Dread”. That’s a coincidence. Mostly…
• The majority of this episode was spread across all 3 (and a half) acts of the Mystic Jungle Zone from Sonic Forces. This is the first major appearance of this location in the Chaos Project, though Big was seen fishing there in the 50th Episode Special.
  • The spot where Johnny and Shadow land appears to be somewhere below Hero’s Act, Aqua Road (and Ep:Shadow Eggman’s Facility by extension), matching the description of aqueducts passing over the ocean.
  • From the top of the hill, Johnny and Shadow are able to view large patches of forest where fires burned years ago, as seen in the background of Sonic’s Act, Luminous Forest. (Eggman’s scattering bombs like confetti!)
  • Being chased by Seraph, Johnny and Shadow enter a particularly decorated ruins structure with a half-finished casino inside, apparently one of the same buildings seen in the background of Classic Sonic’s Act, Casino Forest.
• The concept of the “Black Heralds” shares something of a similarity with post-SGW Archie’s interpretation of the Black Arms in the form of Eclipse the Darkling. It would be a lie to say that no inspiration at all was taken, and planning for this season was happening right around the time those comics first hit my radar, but personally, I never quite liked the way that Archie handled that whole ordeal. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they handled it at all. But you might say that this is me showing how I would’ve done it.
• In his early discussions with Johnny, Shadow mentions that, were he to remove his Inhibitor Rings, he would no longer need a source of Chaos Energy in order to use Chaos Control. This is the first time that this possibility has been mentioned since Chapter 1. Sort of dropped the ball on that one. At that time, the Inhibitor Ring part wasn’t mentioned, so this is serving as the explanation for why we’ve never seen this ability used in The Chaos Project, despite it being explained as possible.
  • Material at lower levels of canon (such as Sonic Battle) have stated outright that this is possible at any time regardless of Inhibitor Rings, but this is one of those instances where I’m choosing not to take everything that game says at face value, even though it has otherwise been CP-canonized.  (7 green Chaos Emeralds, some of which are casually shattered offscreen. I don’t buy it.)
• In the Shadow the Hedgehog game, random soldiers have idle dialogue that includes “Don’t touch the Red Fruit.” If I remember correctly, there might even be a soldier in Westopolis who is forced into one of the Fruits when you get close, teaching you that they’re damaging to the touch. For all we know, that could be Johnny. Sonic was probably off rescuing him during that period of time where he magically disappeared so that Doom’s Eye could introduce himself to Shadow.
• Expect this season to be absolutely packed with random SEGA references. Many of them have already shown up here.
  • The empress of the White Arms is called White Genesis. Besides being the literal opposite of Doom, Genesis is also the American name of the SEGA console that Sonic first appeared on. This is, effectively, the origin point from which all the other references spawned.
  • The mothership commanded by White Genesis is called the White Dreamnet. You might say that I’ve…cast a net to pull in that one. Dreamnet isn’t a SEGA console, but Dreamcast sure is. It’s also been pointed out to me that the “net” change allows the ship’s name to kinda sorta sound like “comet.” Total coincidence, but I’ll take it.
  • The potentially dangerous species listed by Seraph at the end of the episode include the Zoah, a Twilight Cage resident species from Sonic Chronicles, the Algolian monsters, a recurring component of the SEGA fantasy/sci-fi series Phantsy Star, and the Titans of Star—…we’ll get to that.
    • The use of the term “Algolian” was intended as a clever dodging of the issue that the Phantasy Star planet in question is called “Algo” in some games and “Algol” in others. This phrasing is able to cover either option.
      • What Seraph originally said here was “Algolian Monsters and Mother Brain “. Metroid fans likely know that Mother Brain is the primary antagonist of most Metroid games. What they probably don’t know is that Mother Brain is also a primary antagonist in Phantasy Star. As far as I’m aware, it’s a complete coincidence. But it’s such a hilarious one to me, and such an unlikely scenario that I’d be able to simultaneously reference both of them, that I felt like I just had to do it. In the end, however, I cut the reference, because I was just too worried about introducing the potential confusion of “Are you claiming Metroid is canon to Sonic here?” Phantasy Star, maybe, but Metroid, no. The episode starring a Samus knock-off is the last place I would want to give people that false idea.
    • As for the Titans, this is, hopefully, a Sonic Frontiers reference. According to the (deleted?) plot synopsis we currently have of the game, the giant machine(s) seen in the trailer are referred to as Titans. I already theorized that there was something “alien” about the design of that Titan, and when you combine that with the name of the “Starfall Islands,” a potential alien connection becomes downright likely, if you ask me. I theorize that the Titans quite literally fell from the stars, and therefore that there are likely others out there in the galaxy. Depending on how things go from here, I’m starting to think that the “Titans of Starfall” might actually play a significant role this season. Later.
    • EDIT: Hit and a miss! This reference was retconned out of existence, following the release of Sonic Frontiers. The alien prediction was right, but the use of the Titans as something that makes space dangerous didn’t end up making much sense, so this item on the list was replaced with “the enemy of the Ancients.”
  • Also a reference is one of the creatures kept by Seraph on her ship—the Skenouan Astropede. This is a reference to the title character of a scrapped Genesis game which was originally pitched to SEGA as taking place in the Sonic universe. The game never saw the light of day, but the little guy ended up in the CP canon anyways. Welcome home, Astropede! Enjoy your tiny cage!
    • The respective planets from which Seraph’s creatures come are “Orthan” and “Skenoua.” There’s a reference-y naming pattern here, but I think I’ll keep that to myself until a little bit farther down the road.
  • Least notable on the list of SEGA references is the “port town of Miracworl,” a reference to “Alex Kidd in Miracle World,” the former SEGA mascot who was usurped by Sonic. It made sense to me as something that was around before Sonic on the Genesis.
• The three hive leaders of Black Kaosia—Black Famis, Black Morbus, and Black Gladius—have their names derived from Latin. “Famis” for famine, or starvation. “Morbus” for mortality or death, especially by illness or plague. “Gladius” for gladiator, soldier, or death by blade. Combine those three with the Black Beasts, and you have representations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—the four general ways a person can die: by starvation, by illness, by the hand of man, or by the hand of nature. Naturally, the unifier of them all would become Black Doom. Literally, the apocalypse.
• The “three ruling houses” of Black Kaosia are of absolutely no relation to the game “Fire Emblem Three Houses,” despite that being one of my favorite games ever. It’s a coincidence, I swear.

I was expecting a longer trivia section than this, but that’s all I got for now!

-So until next time, remember to live and learn every day!

Announcement: The Sonic Forces Special

With the release of Sonic Forces less than 25 days away, I can now confirm the coming of a very special episode of The Chaos Project. It’s pretty likely at this point that this episode will interrupt the currently-running Dawn of Chaos arc, but it will also serve as the first episode of the next arc. So there will be a little bit of time-jumping. But no worries, it will all be completed eventually. So what does this special episode entail? To be honest, I’m still working on that part. But the big guy in the mask staring at you from the website’s new header should be a big hint. However, not all may be as it seems. Needless to say, the possibilities are Infinite.

-So until then, no need to run from this lunacy.
(My mind is flying.)